Archived: Dipple Surgery

Updated 15 October 2018

The practice is located in a purpose built health centre on a main road with parking facilities. It occupies a proportion of the east wing of the building with a neighbouring surgery that shares a patient waiting area, patient toilets and a staff kitchen.

Dipple Medical Centre is managed by Malling Health (UK) Limited. Malling Health (UK) Limited is a separate legal entity that operates under an umbrella of Integral Medical Holdings (IMH). IMH have a range of GP primary care sites throughout the UK, walk in centres and urgent care centres. The organisation resources include staff, leadership and information governance that is shared across their sites.

• There are approximately 3,712 patients registered at the practice.
• The practice provides services from Dipple Medical Centre, East Wing, Wickford Avenue, Basildon, Essex.
• The practice is registered to provide the following regulated activities: treatment of disease, disorder or injury; diagnostic and screening procedures and Maternity and midwifery services.
• The clinical team comprises of a salaried and a locum GP, a physician associate female, a practice nurse, and a health care assistant. The clinical team are supported by a practice manager, a team of receptionists and a team of managerial staff.
• The practice is open from Monday to Friday between the hours of 8am and 6.30pm.
• The practice has opted out of providing GP out of hour’s services. Unscheduled out-of-hours care is provided by IC24 and patients who contact the surgery outside of opening hours are provided with information on how to contact the service.
• Weekend appointments are available via the Health Hubs, a service set up by the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
• National data indicates that people living in the area are in the second most deprived decile of the deprivation scoring in comparison to England.
• The practice has a comprehensive website providing a wealth of information for patients to understand and access services, including useful links to specialist support services.

Updated 15 October 2018

This practice is rated as Good overall. (Previous rating July 2017 – Requires improvement overall particularly for caring and responsive.)

The key questions at this inspection are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? - Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dipple Surgery on 18 September 2018 as part of our inspection programme to follow up concerns found at the previous inspection.

At this inspection we found:

• The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.
• The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.
• The practice had carried out a number of clinical and non-clinical audits. We found that clinical audits rarely resulted in improvements for the practice.
• The practice involved patients in regular reviews of their medicines.
• The practice had not carried out relevant reviews for patients with learning disabilities. Following the inspection, the practice had provided us with actions to improve the system to carry out these reviews.
• There was a robust system for receiving and actioning safety alerts.
• We found the practice had appropriate systems in place to monitor medicines requiring refrigeration.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Staff had received mandatory training applicable to their role and the practice provided staff with ongoing support.
• We found the practice had conducted environmental risk assessments and completed actions identified.
• The practice had identified 1.1% of its practice list as carers by highlighting them during registration and clinical consultations.
• The practice was clean and tidy and staff had reviewed infection prevention control and policies.
• Data from the national GP patient survey published in July 2018 showed patients rated the practice in line with local and national averages for all aspects of care which the practice had previously found challenging to achieve.
• We received 42 positive comment cards regarding the care and service at the practice and one mixed review.
• The practice was aware of their patient population needs and their preferences and worked to accommodate them. They had found it difficult to form a patient participation group.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Strengthen quality of clinical audits carried out.
• Improve process to carry out health checks for patients with learning difficulties.
• Continue to actively encourage patients to join the patient participation group.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice

Please refer to the detailed report and the evidence tables for further information.

Updated 15 October 2018

Updated 15 October 2018

Updated 15 October 2018

Updated 15 October 2018

Updated 15 October 2018

Updated 15 October 2018